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Better Economy Could Spell Server ProblemsBetter Economy Could Spell Server Problems
As the recession fades people may start buying servers again, but they are already crushed under the ones they have now.
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As the recession fades people may start buying servers again, but they are already crushed under the ones they have now.The next two years could be a problem in the server arena, as the thawing economy will encourage people to buy more servers, but server power, cooling, and space issues were already issues during the Great Recession.
Or so says Gartner. The market research and analysis firm says that server market volume plummeted 16.8 percent last year, and revenue for the vendors fell nearly as much. But things have turned around, and unit shipments are expected to grow 5.5 percent yearly through 2014.
But that will mean 5.5 percent more servers each year that will have to be housed, powered, and cooled. To avoiding succumbing under the weight of this relative prosperity, Gartner urges server managers to adopt a four-pronged course of action:
Take inventory and do modeling. Decide what resources you really have and how long they'll last.
Stop flying blind. There's a new generation of inexpensive watt meters you can employ to see what power your machines really consume.
Don't abandon consolidation and virtualization efforts. They still make sense, and typically give better results as the years go by.
Don't stampede to the store. Just because you can buy new servers may not mean you should. The newer machines are more powerful and more efficient, but it's less expensive to find spare capacity on existing machines.
Of course, all this assumes that the sky is about to open up and rain money. Perhaps, somewhere, it will. Life is hard.
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